Rainy-day beach combing

      We got up this morning and went to the beach.  The cloud cover was low- a gray sea, a gray sky, and the gray sand.  The wind lifted the spray off the waves and blew bits of foam across the sand.  There must have been heavy weather off the coast, because there were mounds of reddish-green seaweed heaped on the shore.  It was kind of squeaky and soft under our feet, the little bladders breaking and rolling away like tiny hollow rubber balls.
       Donal found two mermaid’s purses and delivered a lecture on the different shapes of egg cases laid by different sharks.  Neal leaned over and asked me how he knew, and I had no idea.  Sometimes my son suprises me.  Brenna dug her toes in the sand and spun in circles like an ice dancer, her hair whipping and flying like a banner in the wind. 
       There were surfers out, their boards peeping above the waves like large triangular shark fins.  The pelicans were out with the surfers, and two men with shrimp nets walked by us headed for the inlet.  One of the nets was lavender with purple weights.  All the colors were vivid against the gray world.  I found myself transfixed by the color of a tiny peach clam shell lying on the sand.  I found two beautiful scallops, one the burgandy color of the seaweed, and Brenna found another egg case. 
        Michael was wearing a yellow plastic rain coat and jeans with the cuffs turned up almost to his knees.  He ran in and out of the waves, which chased him hissing and washing across each other.  I couldn’t figure which way the waves were running up the shore.  They kept crossing, probably driven one way by the current and another by the wind.  The patterns in the sand were the strangest I had ever seen, like abstract wall-paper, a symphony of dark and light gray scallops.  Neal saw me studying the pattern and commented, “God must have wanted to do some painting this morning.”
       One of the fishermen pulled in a hook full of seaweed and commented ruefully, “They’re really running out there this morning.”   A woman crossed my path and greeted me with the words, “My pockets are so full of shells I think they’re going to burst.”  I wasn’t sure how to respond to this, so I smiled.  Another fisherman walked barefoot up to his tackle with a silver fish flipping and twisting on his hook.  Pat wanted to help him pull it off, but I distracted him.
       On the way back past the Shell Island Resort Patrick chased the little sand pipers.  They run so fast you can hardly see their legs, and I laughed at how much Patrick looked like them.  His short little chubby legs were moving almost as fast as the birds’.  When he tired, he ran up to Neal and plopped down in the sand laughing.  The soles of his feet were very pink from running in the cool water, and the white sand crusted them like sugar.  I could have eaten him up.
      Michael walked after his daddy trying to stomp out all of his footprints.  He looked so small and frail in his yellow raincoat.  Was Donal every that small and fragile-looking?  I don’t think so.  Everything was so beautiful- the sky and the green, green sea grass on the dunes and the little birds swinging into the wind- that I couldn’t help singing.  I wandered down the beach singing, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is shifting sand…”
       Donal and Brenna walked fifty feet before us, their heads together comparing shells and wandering over the tideline debris trash picking.  When we reached the barrel in front of the resort, everyone had to empty their pockets.  Neal even found a half-buried bath mat!  He laid it on the edge of the barrel, saying, “This might belong to the resort, so I’ll lay it here where they might see it and come for it,” which is a very Nealish thing to say.  He could never believe that someone might throw out a “perfectly good” bathmat that has only been washing up and down the beach for about a month!  Some of the trash we found had been out longer than that.  We picked up several plastic bottles full of ocean water and covered with small shellfish.  Barnacles?  Or perhaps some kind of mussel, with brownish shells that closed like praying hands and little red tongue-like things that were sticking out in their death posture.  I wonder how many of them are going to show up in my washing machine from pocket treasure troves?  I am amazed by all the things my family thinks are “too good to throw away.”
     The best find of the day were two mysterious spheres, perfectly round and somewhere between the size of a ping-pong ball and a tennis ball.  They seemed like wood, only not wood, and they had the little mussels clinging to them at one end, as if there were an opening there that we couldn’t find with our fingers.  Donal plans to saw one open.  We’re wondering if they might be seeds from some island palm washed up the Gulf Stream current to our beach.  What would grow from such things?  Almost anything.

Run Ragged

      Neal’s flying to Tennessee as I type.  He fretted so much over what to wear I got jealous.  What- we go out and he puts on any old thing, but OLIN deserves thirty minutes of fretting over what tie goes with what shirt?  And since when does Neal care about matching?  He tried on two outfits wanting to know what looked good to wear on the PLANE, for pity’s sake.   His final choice looked pretty chic and up-to-date for us.  I had a strong urge to try and make him late for his flight, resisted, and took the kids to Power of Play instead.

      Pat just woke up so I have to be quick- After two hours of “look at my baby,” “I wanna potty” and “He hit me!!!” I drug all seven kids home, fed them, washed them, found their stuff, and got three of them out the door and two down for a nap.  I was looking forward to half an hour’s snooze and a nice hot shower.  (Overslept this morning due to dark & rainy weather).  I didn’t more than lay down and get my eyes closed than Kaye called with a showing.  For tonight!  So while Neal is dining out with his hopefully future team at some swank restaurant, I’m going to be cleaning the house BY MYSELF (or, rather I WISH I was cleaning it by myself….) and taking the kids to McDonald’s.  I had hoped to make a grocery list today & get some food- all we have left in the fridge is condiments- but I guess I’m going to clean instead.

But first I’m getting a shower.  I DESERVE a shower, I WANT a shower, I NEED a shower (really badly to tell the truth) and NO ONE (however whiney) is going to stop me from getting one.  They can sit in the hallway and cry and pound on the door, but if I don’t wash my hair soon I will lose my mind.

    Thank you all for your prayers and your comments.  If this job falls through, I will probably get depressed again, but right now I’m really hopefull!

job updates

     I despaired today.  Sat on the couch and sobbed and prayed and accused God of wanting us to lose our house.  Neal had three phone interviews.  All technical, which is like taking a test on everything he knows about SAP.  After three and a half hours, he was pacing the room and laying on the bed and racking his brain.  He was exhausted and discouraged.  I was exhausted and discouraged.  We had one hour to get the house ready to show and everyone in the house was worn out.
       How long can we keep this up?  I should have more faith.  I should have more faith that God is working this all out according to his good plan.  Why am I still so afraid he will forget me?  Or that he doesn’t consider things like foreclosures serious enough to bother with?  My chief fear in all this is losing the down payment & equity money we have in our house.

     Anyhow, about the time I felt like I couldn’t stand another minute of this, well enough another month, one of the companies called back.  They had been pretty discouraging with Neal on the phone, saying they had a lot of process to go through.  Six more people to interview, etc…  Then they called twenty minutes before the showing wanting Neal to come interview on Friday!!!  Which will teach me a lesson- I almost wouldn’t let the recruiter talk to Neal.  The poor man was begging, “Well, can I PLEASE call him on his cell phone?”  I said, “He’s not on his cell phone, he’s vacuuming my living room!  We have a showing in 20 minutes!”
       It’s a chemical company in Cleveland Tenessee, near Gatlinburg.  They’re flying him up Thursday & interviewing on Friday.  The tech team wants to have dinner with him Thursday night!  Isn’t that sweet?  I’ve never heard of a company that wanted to do that before.
      We would still prefer Lynchburg, but they’re making really slow noises, saying they wouldn’t even be ready to make an offer for another month.  We can’t wait to see if they’ll make their minds up.  (Well, unless we can’t help waiting.  I mean, if we don’t have a job, what can we do but wait?) 
      Cleveland would be a second best, but if Neal likes the job, it would be a good second.  We like the area.  We just don’t like the idea of being so far from family.  Of course, if we don’t get a job soon, we might be a little TOO close to family- like living in their garage.  My loving sis, who has a tiny 2-BR condo in Richmond has invited us to live with her. 
“We’ll manage somehow!” she proclaimed optomistically.  After all, someone can always sleep in the bathtub, right?
      It would have to be better than living out of our van.

      Those of you who pray, please pray for us.  My faith is feeling kind of ragged, like a worn out sneaker.  Lisa told me a verse yesterday that I have been repeating over and over today (sometimes at the top of my lungs):  “Let the PEACE of Christ RULE in your heart…” Col3:15
       Oh Christ, rule in me!  Rule in me!  Forgive my unbelief, and keep me in perfect peace as I keep my mind fixed on you.  Help me not to be afraid, help me not to worry, help me not to give in to imaginations, but to look at the fact that TODAY my needs are provided for, TODAY I have nothing that I lack.  If I can just keep my eyes on TODAY, I won’t be afraid.  It’s all the tomorrows ganging up on me that’s upsetting my balance.
       “Sufficient to the day are the troubles thereof…” and today I have everything I want.  I have a house that is clean, healthy children, my beloved husband, money in the bank, loving friends and family, and best of all- a new bag of library books!  My cup runneth over!
        I need to do that more often- write my blessings list.  And YOU are on it- it’s a blessing to me every time someone tells me that they read my blog!

A lovely fall bonfire!

     We found out tonight that (despite all the recent rain) the burn ban is back on.  The cop who arrived first said even HE didn’t know.

     The kids loved the firetrucks!  Neal says he will now HAVE to leave town as too many of the scout leaders are firemen.  He is writhing in the humiliation of having to hose down every piece of wood & dig up & hose the ashes while three firemen held flashlights on him.  Poor Neal!

Fragrance

    We had a terrific time visiting The Vinyard church this morning.  It was like a vacation- going to a new place, seeing old friends, meeting new people- I had a chance to give a word to a woman that really seemed to move her.  Cool. 
           I also made the mistake of walking by Debbie Davis while she was praying.  She reached out to TOUCH me, and I fell out with a cry right at the pastor’s feet!  They were praying about healing broken and hurting hearts.  Pastor Tom at the Vinyard is such a gentle man.  He and his wife (who I had never met before) sat over me praying for a good five minutes.  They were wonderful, and I really loved what they had to say.  I am no longer suprised when God opens the deepest secrets of my heart to a total stranger, but it is still a wonderfully overwhelming experience. 
        The kids had a great time, too.  They begged to go back again next week.  And, as pleasant an experience as I had, I’ll admit it’s tempting.  Who doesn’t wish vacation would last forever?   It was good to go somewhere new and remember that my brothers and sisters in Christ are not just in my church, but all over the city worshipping, all over the state, all over the nation… even in Pakistan.  The man who gave the sermon was a pastor from Pakistan, and I loved hearing what he had to say.  All except for the part about churches full of people being machine-gunned because they left Islaam.
       When I hear stories of the sacrifices people have made to cling to Christ, it makes me feel like a wimp for asking God to bless me, to give Neal a good job, to make this transition easy, to bring us to a good place…   Lately I have been praying for God to make ME a blessing wherever I go, in whatever circumstances I find myself.  I have always thought that the true secret of life would be the same whether we’re on top of a mountaintop, in prison, or in the middle of the mall.  The one thing I can do sitting, standing, working, or sick in bed is live for God.  I want to live for God.   I want to live for God even if it means being shot by Islaamic terrorists.  Because even if he asks my life of me, it will only be because he gave me my life in the first place, and because he has a greater need than perhaps I can understand.  I want to live to do what he needs from me, to bless the people he brings to me, to love everyone who needs loving, and to give what he asks me to give.
     In giving myself, I am found.  I can’t comprehend the idea of an afterlife.  I know God promises that by dying I will live, but I just can’t imagine it.  I do know, however, that when I live for him here, live the way he wants me to, my happiness overflows and I bring joy wherever I go.
       It’s only when I slip up that I make myself and everyone around me miserable.

       Here’s one of my favorite bits of the bible: “But thanks be to God, who made us his captives and leads us along in Christ’s triumphal procession.  Now wherever we go he uses us to tell others about the Lord and to spread the Good News like a sweet perfume.  Our lives are a fragrance presented by Christ to God.  But this fragrance is perceived differently by those being saved and by those perishing.  To those who are perishing we are a fearful smell of death and doom.  But to those who are being saved we are a life-giving perfume.”  2Corinthians:14-16

There was a lot of perfume at the Vinyard this morning!!!

New Look

Yeah, we have a new look.  I was getting cross-eyed trying to read the old page.  This one still has lots of RED, but it also has larger type!

Book Review: The Yada Yada Prayer Group

The Yada Yada Prayer Group
by Neta Jackson

      I’m not really into “women’s” novels, especially “Circle of Friends” novels.  Usually they’re a little cheesy, a little ditzy, and they imply that female friendships will be your salvation from all of life’s disasters.

Right.

       Despite my dislike of the genre, I enjoyed this book.  Largely, I think, because the women in it were more real than the general run of “friends” characters.  They spoke like real people, in a variety of dialects, and they reacted like real people.  They were accidentally rude.  They spoke without thinking.  They complained about the food, dressed up, dressed down, talked about their kids, pets, husbands, etc. like women I have met.  My favorite character was Adele who was painfully blunt and didn’t have a lot of patience with nonsense. 
       More than anything else, they were having real life problems.  Not dorky problems. 
       Ok, on the bad side, the book implied that everything was easily resolved by believing prayer.  It has been my experience that, although God answers prayer, he isn’t in a big hurry about it.  He tends to work us through a lot of painful self-knowledge lessons before he grants the prayer, and he frequently responds to my prayers with that hollow silence that means, “I am ignoring this particular prayer, my dear daughter, for your own good.”
        I also didn’t like some of the implications that black spirituality was better than white spirituality.  In our God-starved nation, I think any spirituality is a valuable thing!  Like water found in a desert, perhaps we shouldn’t be too critical about its pedigree.  Although I do agree with the author that in my limited experience black churches (and black women in particular) seem to be louder and less self-concious about their worship. 
        I liked the way issues of race between the women were handled.  It seemed like a realistic portrayal of some of the tensions that have to be dealt with in interracial and, um, interfinancial (?) churches.  I recognized several kinds of people I’ve met in our church in the women of this book.  Including the Messianic Jew!
        It left me with some questions: would it really be that simple to forge friendships among such dissimilar people?  Would it really be that easy to get out of a manslaughter charge?  Is Joni ever going to talk to her husband about her history with drink?  Or is she just going to dither and yell for the rest of her life?  And why don’t we have a Jewish pastry shop in our town?  It sounded wonderful.
       Overall impression: I’m up for the next book. 

Book Review: My Year Inside…

My Year Inside Radical Islam: A Memoir
by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

      One of the strengths of this book is the way the author is able to project himself back in time and write from the viewpoint of the man he was then.  I found the first chapter almost unbearable because of this.  Mr. G-R (Please forgive the abbreviation) was raised by very new-agey parents and had a pretty new-agey college experience (not as bad as mine, though!).  It was hard for me to sit still and listen to his logical arguments against Christian witnessing.  I just HAD to flip to the back of the book… yep!  It’s ok- he converts in the end.
      But boy!  He took the long way around doing it!  The blurb on the front cover says, “At twenty-three, I was a devout believer in radical Islam.  I worked for a Saudi-funded charity in Ashland, Oregon, that was accused of funding al-Qaeda.  Funny thing, I was born Jewish.  At the time, it all seemed pretty normal.”
       I found the book fascinating and devoured it in a day and a half.  I found myself comparing the three faiths: New Age religion (or at least, my experience of it), Islaam (or his experience of it), and Christianity.  Fundamental Islaam, much like fundamental Judaism, is rules, rules, and more rules.  Slowly, as he moved deeper into the faith, trying to make his life more and more pleasing to God, he was increasingly burdened with rules.  He was stripped of his music.  He lost the ability to choose what to wear, who to speak to, where to go, what to eat, who to associate with…  Most importantly he talks about losing the ability to decide for himself.  Everything, down to the tiniest detail of how to live, was legislated for him.  In order to live by faith he had to give up evaluating how he felt about anything and simply obey.  In the end, he found himself forced (by the necessity to respond literally to the Koran in order to maintain his purity before God) to support and pray for Islaamic agression and violent jihad.
        One of the things I was afraid of in coming to Christ was that I was going to have to go through a brain-purging very similar to what he describes.  I truly thought I was going to have to be brain-washed to live by faith.  It was one of the most astonishing things about my first couple years as a Christian to discover that I actually agreed with what I was learning!  It made sense- more sense than the philosophy I grew up with.  (For example, modern philosophy teaches that it doesn’t matter how many horror films teens watch, they will never subsequently be influenced to act out their violent fantasies.  Here’s another good one: s*x before marriage is fun, lets you get to know your future spouse, and is valuable as a trial period before the commitment of marriage!  It will never break your heart, damage your future relationships, make you suspicious or calloused, and certainly never expose you to the financial or emotional hardships of single parenthood!  Got to love that one.)
         As Mr. G-R described the humiliating struggle of laying down his life, his beliefs, his ability to judge, his desire to think in the name of pleasing God, I was stirringly reminded of the journey I have been taking to learn to please the God whose “gentleness has made me great.”  He is ALL GOOD, and there is no darkness in him!  Hallelujah!
          I know there are requirements in living for Christ.  There are laws.  But I have found that the more I obey them, the freer I am.  I obey the commandment to honor my husband, and I am free of adultery, divorce, sneaking, lying, contention, strife, arguements…  It’s when I let my temper go that I am bound.   I have yet to find one New Testament commandment that did not make me a happier, more pleasant person to be around.   (I haven’t tried all the Old Testament ones yet.)
        Mr. G-R talks about how judgemental he became, and how judgemental the men around him were.  Nit-picking, fault-finding, criticism, pressure…   Sort of reminds me of some of the Christian churches I’ve heard of: no dancin’, no drinkin’, no listenin’ to that music, no card playin’, no foolin’ around…  All those rules take all the sweetness out of what should be a joy: Living for God, loving God, and growing in wisdom, knowledge and favor under his gentle tutelage.  And I have found him to be so very gentle…
         I once heard that Christianity is the only religion in the world where you get saved first and sanctified afterward!  Apparently, in all the others you have to work towards salvation on a never-ending treadmill of trying to “be good.”
         Of course, we also have the New Age religions, who have decided that “good” is a subjective judgement that should be outlawed.  Everyone’s “good” is different and should be equally respected.  Religion is viewed as an “experience” or an “adventure” where the seeker is always out to try something new.  Mr. G-R had an interesting thing to say about this.  He said the New-Age viewpoint began to seem more like a search for transcendental beauty than a desire to serve God.
          I loved that- it was the very reason I became unsatisfied with Wicca.  (That and the fact that all their logic ties itself in knots if you think about it long enough.)  I guess I’m not the only one who, once having accepted that there IS a God, can’t be satisfied until I belong to Him utterly, am pleasing him, serving him and obeying him.  As Mr. G-R said, when a friend was suprised he could just give up Islaam and switch to Christianity, “Some people believe in God, and other’s don’t,’ I said, ‘If you can see this through my eyes, you’d understand that the truly suprising move would have been if I simply ceased to believe.”  
          He switched because he discovered that Islaam’s rules couldn’t satisfy his longing to please God or draw closer to God.  Although he got some satisfaction out of feeling righteous when he obeyed them, in the end it was a hollow pleasure.  And although there is some satisfaction in feeling “free” to believe and do ANYTHING you want to in New Age religion, in the end, that, too, is a hollow pleasure.
      What we really want and need as humans is not absolute freedom, but absolute love.  And without the deep and abiding knowledge that God loves us and will do anything to save us, law-following quickly becomes and exercise in tail-chasing.  The tail is always there, but you never seem to be able to grab it.  There’s always some bit of the law you didn’t quite get, and you have to settle for the second best satisfaction of sneering at the people who got more wrong than you.
        I enjoyed this book.  It’s more philosophical than action-packed, but if you’re curious about how Islaamic fundamentalists think about life, I think you will find it worth the read.  Just hang on tight through that first chapter….

New Book, Total lack of Job updates

      I am very, very excited!!!  I’ve been working on, ahem, my first book.  I emailed drafts of the first few pages around to a couple people, but the silence was deafening.  So I read it to my favorite test audience: my ten-year-old son.  I especially loved the way he thrashed around and bit the pillows on my bed when he got excited over the fight scene.  I love reading to Donal!  He gets so excited about things.
      So I’ve sat up late the last two nights and done a couple more scenes, introduced two more main characters and had some really beautiful description.  I’ve never written so easily!  I always seem to have something to say next.  I’ve been sneaking up the stairs after the kids’ bedtimes (or even a little before) to beat Neal to the computer.  Ha ha ha!!!  And he’s been very gracious about trying to sleep with a pillow over his head because I really bang when I’m typing.  (Those strong piano-trained fingers, I guess.)
      

Oh, and no job yet.  The guy Neal wanted to do contract work through isn’t returning his calls any more.  What’s going on?  We get two companies that promise to send an offer in a few days, and two weeks later, there is still no offer.  We’ve had two other companies do background checks, he’s done about six phone interviews, two face-to-face, everyone’s been so positive… and then nothing.  DAK in Leland, in particular, has been acting very strange.   They had a third party company checking out Neal’s resume.  They’ve been calling here saying, “We can’t find any proof that you took your degree,” and “That company has no record of your employment,” and so on.  Neal keeps faxing them proof, records, transcripts… but they won’t even return his calls anymore, and neither will DAK.  It’s confusing.  What’s going on?  Neal has got to be the most reliable, honest, hard-working man I have ever met.  He has falsified NOTHING, been convicted of NOTHING, been accused of NOTHING… and yet we have this problem.
       I am taking DEEP BREATHS and trusting in GOD who guards the reputations of those who rely on Him.

Odds & Ends, a win, a necklace, and some gum.

It’s been an up and down kind of day.  All the tensions are getting to us, I think.  Neal and I had a flaming spat yesterday and had to kiss and make up at Tex & Ruthie’s.  We stayed late.  My knee was aching badly.  They prayed for me, but someone wasn’t holding their mouth right or something, because it isn’t any better today. 
       This morning, I was kneeling, taking a load of laundry out of the washer, and I felt something pop.  After that, every time I put any real weight on it, it had that funny bone electric feeling.  And it hurt.  We were in the last thirty minutes of count-down to a showing and I couldn’t walk!  Thanks be to God the realtor called to reschedule.  Donal helped me upstairs and Neal put me to bed for a nap.  He commented that it was no fun at all undressing me if I were going to keep wincing and acting miserable!
      The pain comes and goes depending on how much I use it.  Frustrating.  If something is injured you expect it to stay INJURED, not wobble back and forth between fine and wretched like an intoxicated butterfly.  So one minute I’m running around gleefully, and the next minute I feel like someone is pulling the joint apart.  Sigh.

     On the positive side, I had a dreamy, pleasant morning before the washer incident.  I love this nice weather, and after having seven kids all week, four was a very light burden.  Michael wanted to earn some money to buy a “toy at McDonald’s” so I gave him some little jobs to do.  He scrubbed some scuff marks off the floor, opened a package of chalk and organized the box and took some laundry down.  For this he was rewarded with thirty six cents.  He kept anxiously taking the money out of his pocket to count and admire it.  To him, 36 cents is really just “four monies.”
       I let him take the coins (the ones he hadn’t already lost, at least) to the grocery and buy a big ball of gum out of the candy machines.  The first machine ate his quarter.  He was absolutely devastated!  He had worked very hard scrubbing and cutting and unwrapping and making sure all his trash was put away!  It was his first real wages.  Eaten by a machine!  We went and told the sad story to Elaine, my favorite cashier at Food Lion, and she graciously wrote a note for her cash drawer and gave us a new quarter.  Crisis averted.
      I really do like Food Lion in general.  When Elle magazine put a picture of a naked model on the front of the magazine, the Food Lion manager was very obliging about removing it from the racks.  A lot of places wouldn’t do that.  I haven’t gotten them to budge on the issue of carrying meat not previously soaked in preservative sauce, but I’m still working on them.

       To answer Jeannie’s question, no, we still have not sold the house.  And no, Neal still has no job.  He’s started looking for contract work.  He’s hoping to continue the interview process and step into a permanent job as soon as the contract is over.  It’s all more difficult that going straight into a real job, but what can we do?  Bills must be paid, children must be dressed, and groceries must be purchased.  Someone stole a full tank of gas out of Neal’s truck last night.  I drove my poor old van until the gas was so low I had to gun the engine to get it to start!  Have you ever heard of that before?  I’ve driven some until I coasted into the station after it quit, but I’ve never had one with gas enough to run but not enough to turn the engine over.  Anyhow, I filled it up tonight, and as long as our neighbors with the siphons don’t visit, we’re ok.

        The best part of the day (other than a nice long nap with my knee propped up on a pillow) was The Rock Women’s event tonight.  It was really neat- they had lots of silk flowers and tissue paper and ribbon and stuff on the tables.  There was a table with food items, and a table with card-making supplies.  We were put in teams of six and challenged to decorate our own table, make place cards, and produce a plate of hors-d’oeuvres in fourty five minutes.  Then they sent judges around to grade our work. 
       My favorite table was the one where they wrapped the flowers up like a bouquet in gauzy gold cloth and laid it across the center piece.  There was another table with the vase upside down over an arrangement of flowers stuck in styrofoam.  It was much more elegant that I’m making it sound, though.  Very clever. 
      The most amazing part of the evening was that my team won!!!  Of course, we had Barbara Miller doing the food, and if anyone knows food, she does!  And Karen Corey with another lady, very crafty, did very cute place cards.  I went all around the room, and I think ours were the fanciest.  A couple other ladies did a very nice centerpiece for us, and I cut silly placemats out of paper.  It was fun.   It was worth it to see Barbara Miller jumping up and down in circles and screaming over the win!  But my prize was really beautiful.  It was a silver necklace made of three strands with tiny green and silver stones spaced out on it.  Heike came and clasped it around my neck and Carolyn gave me a thumbs up and I felt like the queen of the universe (even if I was wearing jeans!).  So I had a wonderful time.  (All this and Heaven too….)
      Unfortunately, I got so excited doing the challenge at the church that I was moving pretty briskly around the room, and now my knee is throbbing so bad I can’t sleep.  (This post brought to you by the Insomnia Corporation, Ltd.)  I’m going to go see if I can dig my hot water bottle out of the garage and take some ibuprofen. 
      All told, the good with the bad, I’d have to say it was worth it!  I’m wearing my necklace to church tomorrow.